Letter: Fallout studies

From
P J COUGHTREY

Four years after the Chernobyl accident the media still confuse fact
with fallacy. It is incorrect that researchers ‘have just started field
trials to see if adding minerals to land could reduce the amount of radiocaesium
taken up by vegetation’ (This Week, 28 April). In July and August 1987 the
Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE) at Merlewood conducted a field study
on the effects on the caesium-137 concentration in sheep of spreading bentonite
onto fell grassland. The results were presented at national and international
meetings and subsequently published in scientific journals.